Tech Roundup: Nov 25, 2012
Facebook to stop public votes:
As a Facebook user, do you know you have the privilege to vote on the firm's changes to data privacy policies? Whether you know it or not becomes immaterial given the latest move from the social network, which has now decided to scrap this practice altogether. As noted here on its website, for the public votes to be taken into consideration, at least 30% of its entire user base (300 million or more) would need to participate - something that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality. Instead, it plans to come up with a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement.
Users will also get to vote the last time to have a say on these changes to data privacy policy from Nov 29. But the proposed policy updates have garnered severe outcries from privacy groups who have raised questions over the company's willingness to engage its users. Facebook's failure to increase awareness on such voting mechanisms among its users proves that it had not been really serious about incorporating user feedback and that the practice was just a namesake. Furthermore, it also has made public about its plans to integrate data from its other services like Instagram (well.. well.. the day has come!). Google is already facing the heat over a similar controversial policy that unified user data from its various services. Now it's Facebook's turn I guess!
Facebook and dissent:
When Mumbai shutdown to observe the demise of controversial politician Bal Thackeray, 21-year old Shaheen Dhada posted the following message on her Facebook wall (or Timeline): "With all respect, every day, thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. Just due to one politician died a natural death, everyone just goes bonkers. They should know, we are resilient by force, not by choice. When was the last time, did anyone showed some respect or even a two-minute silence for Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Azad, Sukhdev or any of the people because of whom we are free-living Indians? Respect is earned, given, and definitely not forced. Today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect."
While that might have been the truth, little did she and Renu Srinivasan, who liked her post, realize that it could land them up in jail (currently released on bail) for creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes! Is India turning regressive? Is freedom of speech and expression, a core fundamental right indispensable in a democracy, losing its value? Abusing a broadly defined law to curb a constitutional right isn't the right approach. With all due respect, won't the same law have been applicable to Mr. Thackeray himself? What a paradox!
The Gaza conflict reverberates online:
Hacker activist group Anonymous, which has come out in support for Palestine, unleashed a cyber war on Israel following the latest conflict at Gaza. Dubbed #OpIsrael, the group went on to publicize personal information of over 5,000 Israeli government officials and the Twitter account of Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was hacked to read the following message: "WE THE PEOPLE WANT LASTING PEACE, PALESTINE TO BE RECOGNIZED BE FREE. END THE OCCUPATION. STOP THE ATTACKS #FREEPALESTINE #GAZA". In addition, crucial databases were deleted and several government websites, including that of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, were defaced. The group's very pertinent question that "(e)very government can start a war, but can they ensure peace?" will no doubt be a difficult one to answer.
The war between Hamas and Israel's IDF last week intensified on Twitter as well with both sides live-tweeting about their attacks on its opponent. Now Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a pro-Israel organization in the US, has started a campaign called No Twitter for Terrorists to oust Hamas from the micro-blogging social network. CUFI has argued that Twitter is aiding the terrorist organization by providing material support (a Twitter account) and thus committing a federal crime. A sticky situation for Twitter!
No December in Android 4.2:
This incident goes on to show how a minor bug in the source code can have far-reaching consequences! Identified in Android 4.2 aka Jelly Bean, it doesn't allow you to add birthdays for the month of December from the People app because of a simple error. Anyone familiar with coding in a programming language would know that the start of an array (a structure used to store collections of similar data) begins with the index 0. The months of the year, twelve in number, which when stored in such a data structure would go like this: 0,1,2,3..,11. But what if you made the starting index as 1 and forgot to change the highest as 12 instead of 11? You get only 11 items, or rather months in this case. And hence no December!
Windows Phone 8 phones suffering from reboot and battery issues:
Any newly launched product is bound to have problems. That includes Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 as well. Users who have purchased the latest WP8 phones like the HTC WP 8X or the Lumia 920 are reportedly said to be facing random reboots and abysmal battery life on their phones, with some devices stuck on the splash screen when attempting a hard reset. Disabling the "tap + send (NFC)" option is said to be improving the battery life to some extent according to the Verge. In the meantime, both the companies are working with Microsoft to resolve the issues. It may be noted that the Lumia 800 with WP 7.5, when launched last year, suffered from similar problems which Nokia later rectified with an update.
Jolla previews Sailfish OS:
A couple of Nokia employees who left the company to form their own startup Jolla have detailed their upcoming Sailfish OS as promised earlier. Based on an open-source operating system called Mer, Sailfish promises effortless multi-tasking and an enriched user experience. But what could give the OS a major push is the fact that it can run Android applications unchanged (emphasis please!). However if you wish to take advantage of the Saifish features, you would want to port them to the native language (i.e. QT/QML). Hope Sailfish achieves what Meego didn't!
Apple gets a maps reprieve from Nokia, but proves to be equally buggy:
Cupertino bungled its Maps app, though it's said to be improving in its homeland. Google hasn't yet released its native version of Maps (supposedly under testing) and so when Nokia released its Here maps application, it seemed like a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately for Nokia, it's a golden opportunity gone waste. Not only is it blurry and slow, but also suffers from missing POI information like its Apple counterpart. Nokia in the meanwhile is said to be working hard to perfect the mapping solution to make it on-par with the Windows Phone experience.
No Jelly Bean love for Samsung Galaxy S III phones in India:
Samsung had begun its rollout of Android 4.1 to Samsung Galaxy S III two weeks back. However, the update has been temporarily suspended after it was found to contain bugs. While the Korean manufacturer is looking into the issues, it is yet to announce an official date for the release. The perils of these OEM's!
Microsoft's activation fail:
A new security flaw in Windows 8 has unexpectedly allowed software pirates to activate their Windows 8 OS legitimately free of cost. It is said to happen when one tries to do a Windows Media Center upgrade (which is currently free for a limited period of time) on an existing copy of Windows 8 that's been activated legitimately or otherwise. Thus even a pirated copy of Windows could turn legitimate post this upgrade at no cost. Piracy is a grave problem for a company like Microsoft and rest assured the firm would be swift to patch the flaw from being exploited. But it's nonetheless amusing to see such glaring bugs out in the open!
In other news:
As a Facebook user, do you know you have the privilege to vote on the firm's changes to data privacy policies? Whether you know it or not becomes immaterial given the latest move from the social network, which has now decided to scrap this practice altogether. As noted here on its website, for the public votes to be taken into consideration, at least 30% of its entire user base (300 million or more) would need to participate - something that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality. Instead, it plans to come up with a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement.
Users will also get to vote the last time to have a say on these changes to data privacy policy from Nov 29. But the proposed policy updates have garnered severe outcries from privacy groups who have raised questions over the company's willingness to engage its users. Facebook's failure to increase awareness on such voting mechanisms among its users proves that it had not been really serious about incorporating user feedback and that the practice was just a namesake. Furthermore, it also has made public about its plans to integrate data from its other services like Instagram (well.. well.. the day has come!). Google is already facing the heat over a similar controversial policy that unified user data from its various services. Now it's Facebook's turn I guess!
Facebook and dissent:
When Mumbai shutdown to observe the demise of controversial politician Bal Thackeray, 21-year old Shaheen Dhada posted the following message on her Facebook wall (or Timeline): "With all respect, every day, thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. Just due to one politician died a natural death, everyone just goes bonkers. They should know, we are resilient by force, not by choice. When was the last time, did anyone showed some respect or even a two-minute silence for Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Azad, Sukhdev or any of the people because of whom we are free-living Indians? Respect is earned, given, and definitely not forced. Today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect."
While that might have been the truth, little did she and Renu Srinivasan, who liked her post, realize that it could land them up in jail (currently released on bail) for creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes! Is India turning regressive? Is freedom of speech and expression, a core fundamental right indispensable in a democracy, losing its value? Abusing a broadly defined law to curb a constitutional right isn't the right approach. With all due respect, won't the same law have been applicable to Mr. Thackeray himself? What a paradox!
The Gaza conflict reverberates online:
Hacker activist group Anonymous, which has come out in support for Palestine, unleashed a cyber war on Israel following the latest conflict at Gaza. Dubbed #OpIsrael, the group went on to publicize personal information of over 5,000 Israeli government officials and the Twitter account of Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was hacked to read the following message: "WE THE PEOPLE WANT LASTING PEACE, PALESTINE TO BE RECOGNIZED BE FREE. END THE OCCUPATION. STOP THE ATTACKS #FREEPALESTINE #GAZA". In addition, crucial databases were deleted and several government websites, including that of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, were defaced. The group's very pertinent question that "(e)very government can start a war, but can they ensure peace?" will no doubt be a difficult one to answer.
The war between Hamas and Israel's IDF last week intensified on Twitter as well with both sides live-tweeting about their attacks on its opponent. Now Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a pro-Israel organization in the US, has started a campaign called No Twitter for Terrorists to oust Hamas from the micro-blogging social network. CUFI has argued that Twitter is aiding the terrorist organization by providing material support (a Twitter account) and thus committing a federal crime. A sticky situation for Twitter!
No December in Android 4.2:
This incident goes on to show how a minor bug in the source code can have far-reaching consequences! Identified in Android 4.2 aka Jelly Bean, it doesn't allow you to add birthdays for the month of December from the People app because of a simple error. Anyone familiar with coding in a programming language would know that the start of an array (a structure used to store collections of similar data) begins with the index 0. The months of the year, twelve in number, which when stored in such a data structure would go like this: 0,1,2,3..,11. But what if you made the starting index as 1 and forgot to change the highest as 12 instead of 11? You get only 11 items, or rather months in this case. And hence no December!
Windows Phone 8 phones suffering from reboot and battery issues:
Any newly launched product is bound to have problems. That includes Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 as well. Users who have purchased the latest WP8 phones like the HTC WP 8X or the Lumia 920 are reportedly said to be facing random reboots and abysmal battery life on their phones, with some devices stuck on the splash screen when attempting a hard reset. Disabling the "tap + send (NFC)" option is said to be improving the battery life to some extent according to the Verge. In the meantime, both the companies are working with Microsoft to resolve the issues. It may be noted that the Lumia 800 with WP 7.5, when launched last year, suffered from similar problems which Nokia later rectified with an update.
Jolla previews Sailfish OS:
A couple of Nokia employees who left the company to form their own startup Jolla have detailed their upcoming Sailfish OS as promised earlier. Based on an open-source operating system called Mer, Sailfish promises effortless multi-tasking and an enriched user experience. But what could give the OS a major push is the fact that it can run Android applications unchanged (emphasis please!). However if you wish to take advantage of the Saifish features, you would want to port them to the native language (i.e. QT/QML). Hope Sailfish achieves what Meego didn't!
Apple gets a maps reprieve from Nokia, but proves to be equally buggy:
Cupertino bungled its Maps app, though it's said to be improving in its homeland. Google hasn't yet released its native version of Maps (supposedly under testing) and so when Nokia released its Here maps application, it seemed like a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately for Nokia, it's a golden opportunity gone waste. Not only is it blurry and slow, but also suffers from missing POI information like its Apple counterpart. Nokia in the meanwhile is said to be working hard to perfect the mapping solution to make it on-par with the Windows Phone experience.
No Jelly Bean love for Samsung Galaxy S III phones in India:
Samsung had begun its rollout of Android 4.1 to Samsung Galaxy S III two weeks back. However, the update has been temporarily suspended after it was found to contain bugs. While the Korean manufacturer is looking into the issues, it is yet to announce an official date for the release. The perils of these OEM's!
Microsoft's activation fail:
A new security flaw in Windows 8 has unexpectedly allowed software pirates to activate their Windows 8 OS legitimately free of cost. It is said to happen when one tries to do a Windows Media Center upgrade (which is currently free for a limited period of time) on an existing copy of Windows 8 that's been activated legitimately or otherwise. Thus even a pirated copy of Windows could turn legitimate post this upgrade at no cost. Piracy is a grave problem for a company like Microsoft and rest assured the firm would be swift to patch the flaw from being exploited. But it's nonetheless amusing to see such glaring bugs out in the open!
In other news:
- HTC chief Peter Chou dismisses analyst's estimates regarding the Apple-HTC agreement; terms the claims that it will pay Apple $6 to $8 per Android phone are "outrageous".
- US Patent Office grants Apple a design patent to turn virtual pages.
- Android 4.1 update rolling out to HTC One X in India.
- Samsung launches Galaxy Camera in India for Rs. 29,900.
- Microsoft to end official support for Windows XP in another 500 days.
- Pakistan bans mobile services in the name of national security following a string of blasts.
- Google's intelligent personal assistant Google Now wins Popular Science's Innovation of the Year award.
- Samsung expected to sell 60 million smartphones in Q4 2012.
- Mozilla Firefox 17 out with baked in Facebook integration.
- Apple applies for a trademark on iPad mini with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
- Samsung rumored to prepping Galaxy S IV for January launch at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
- Microsft files a patent for smart glasses with augmented reality.
- Intel CEO Paul Otellini set to retire early next year after serving the company for almost 40 years.
- Psy's Gangnam Style becomes the most watched video on YouTube.
- Microsoft Windows Phone 7.8 update to existing WP 7.5 phones said to be imminent.
- Apple fixes iMessage security flaw that let stolen iPhones receive messages even after a remote wipe or deactivation.
- 284 '.pk' domain names in Pakistan, including Google, Apple and Microsoft websites, hacked by a Turkish hacker group eboz; motive unclear.
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